Zohran Mamdani’s City-Run Grocery Stores Have Already Been Tried and Failed

New York City Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani wants to open government-run grocery stores in every borough as part of his plan to achieve what he calls “food justice” in Gotham. It’s an idea straight out of The Communist Manifesto that’s gaining traction on the left but has been tried and failed countless times throughout history – including right here in the United States.

Americans who lived through the Cold War will well remember the infamous bread lines endemic to the Soviet Union, the Great Chinese Famine that killed tens of millions, and the empty shelves in Cuban grocery stores that spurred tens of thousands to make a desperate journey to the United States. Wherever it has been tried, Marxist-style collectivism has resulted in scarcity and starvation.

That includes in some American cities – namely Kansas City, where a failing city-funded store is even now showing exactly what happens when socialists play supermarket owner.

Sun Fresh Market was supposed to bring fresh, affordable food to a struggling neighborhood in Kansas City. Opened in 2018 as part of a government effort to eliminate so-called “food deserts,” the store occupies a city-owned building and is operated by Community Builders of Kansas City, a nonprofit developer.

But instead of bringing fresh, healthy food to a struggling neighborhood, the store, funded with millions of public dollars, is plagued by mismanagement, rampant crime, and chronic shortages, with shoppers greeted by bare aisles and rotten produce.

Taxpayers have spent heavily to keep the project afloat. The city invested $17 million to renovate the surrounding strip mall. In addition, Kansas City approved at least $750,000 in emergency public funds to prop up the store.

Despite the subsidies, the store is a catastrophe. Aisles are stocked with cleaning supplies and boxed food, but meat and egg coolers sit empty. Produce, when available, is often spoiled. The store has lost nearly $900,000 in recent years, and weekly foot traffic has dropped from 14,000 to just 4,000 shoppers.

Despite this monumental failure, socialists like Mamdani want to roll this idea out in America’s largest city – and then presumably nationwide. A self-described Democratic Socialist, Mamdani has made the proposal a centerpiece of his campaign, framing it as a solution to food insecurity in poor neighborhoods.

His plan would eliminate rent and property taxes for government-partnered grocers, replacing private markets with a publicly subsidized food retail network. It’s a direct challenge to New York’s existing grocery infrastructure that has already triggered backlash.

Industry leaders are sounding the alarm. Supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis warned that Mamdani’s proposal would likely force him to close his stores rather than compete with subsidized city-run competitors.

Some defenders of Mamdani’s proposal have pointed to New York’s existing “public markets” as evidence that city-run grocery stores already work. But that comparison is misleading.

Markets like Essex Street are operated by private vendors who simply lease space in city-owned buildings at discounted rents. The basic free-market profit incentive still exists. Mamdani’s plan, meanwhile, eliminates rent and taxes – and profit – altogether, putting the city itself in charge of running a retail food network.

Since winning the Democrat primary, Mamdani has stayed mostly silent on the plan and declined media requests for comment.

The collapse of Kansas City’s city-backed grocery store should not be surprising, as it is exactly what public choice theory predicts.

In the private sector, grocers (and all other business owners) survive by responding to customer demand. When products don’t sell or shelves go empty, they adjust prices, improve service, or go out of business.

But the Sun Fresh Market didn’t face that pressure. Instead, when shoppers encountered empty coolers and rotting produce, the store’s operators turned to the city council, not consumers, for another round of public funding.

Bureaucrats, in turn, responded not with accountability, but with subsidies. They passed an emergency ordinance to release funds after activists disrupted a city council meeting.

With no profit motive, no market discipline, and no clear lines of responsibility, the outcome was predictable: wasted money, decaying inventory, and dwindling customers.

As 20th-century economist Friedrich Hayek argued, knowledge is decentralized and best transmitted through prices in a competitive market. Central planners, no matter how well-intentioned, can’t match the local knowledge and incentives that drive private enterprise.

The government simply lacks the tools to run an efficient retail operation and when it fails, taxpayers are the ones who foot the bill.

In other words, when the government opens grocery stores, everyone pays and no one eats.

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Catsimatidis warned that Mamdani’s city-run grocery plan would “collapse our food supply, kill private industry, and drag us down a path toward the bread lines of the old Soviet Union.”

One thing’s for sure: nothing captures the failures of socialism quite like empty grocery store shelves.

Sarah Katherine Sisk is a proud Hillsdale College alumna and a master’s student in economics at George Mason University. You can follow her on X @SKSisk76.